Close Encounters

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Martha Kearney hosts British celebrities past and present at the National Portrait Gallery

Martha Kearney invites ten leading figures of today to the newly refurbished National Portrait Gallery to champion a favourite picture from the Gallery's star-studded collection.

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Close Encounters: Simon Singh and Alan Turing

Sir Paul Smith & Cecil Beaton

Simon Singh and Alan Turing

BBC Radio 4 - Close Encounters, Simon Singh and Alan Turing

In the last programme in Martha Kearney's series marking the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery her guest is the mathematician and writer Simon Singh.

In this final episode of Close Encounters, Martha Kearney's series marking the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery after three years of renovation, Martha is joined by the Mathematician and writer Simon Singh.  He chooses to celebrate a very simple photographic portrait of the code breaker Alan Turing.  Simon was part of a Bank of England panel that saw to it that Turing would be the image we see on our fifty pound notes and he explains why this quiet figure whose image is comfortably the smallest in the gallery in which it is displayed, is the most important figure in science and mathematics since Sir Isaac Newton.  
It's a story that reveals much about the way Britain has changed in the last half a century and rounds off the series which itself illustrates the tone and impact the National Portrait Gallery is endeavouring to deliver as it opens its doors to the public once again.

Producer:  Tom Alban

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